Sidama or Sidaamu Afoo is an
Afro-Asiatic language
The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic su ...
belonging to the
Highland East Cushitic
Highland East Cushitic, or Sidamic, is a branch of the Afroasiatic language family spoken in south-central Ethiopia. They are often grouped with Lowland East Cushitic, Dullay, and Yaaku as ''East Cushitic'', but that group is not well defined ...
branch of the
Cushitic
The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and the Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As o ...
family. It is spoken in parts of southern
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
by the
Sidama people
The Sidama ( am, ሲዳማ) are an ethnic group traditionally inhabiting the Sidama Region, formerly part of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region of Ethiopia. On 23 November 2019, the Sidama Zone became the 10th regional s ...
, particularly in the densely populated
Sidama National Regional State (SNRS). Sidaamu Afoo is the ethnic
autonym
Autonym may refer to:
* Autonym, the name used by a person to refer to themselves or their language; see Exonym and endonym
* Autonym (botany), an automatically created infrageneric or infraspecific name
See also
* Nominotypical subspecies, in zo ...
for the language, while Sidaminya is its name in
Amharic. Although it is not known to have any specific dialects, it shares over 64% lexical similarity with
Alaba-K'abeena, 62% with
Kambaata, and 53% with
Hadiyya, all of which are other languages spoken in southwestern
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
. The word order is typically SOV. Sidaama has over 100,000
L2 speakers. The literacy rate for
L1 speakers is 1%-5%, while for L2 speakers it is 20%. In terms of its writing, Sidaama used an Ethiopic script up until 1993, from which point forward it has used a Latin script.
The term ''Sidamo'' has also been used by some authors to refer to larger groupings of East Cushitic and even
Omotic languages. The languages within this Sidamo grouping contain similar, alternating phonological features. The results from a research study conducted in 1968-1969 concerning mutual intelligibility between different Sidamo languages suggest that Sidaama is more closely related to the
Gedeo language
Gedeo is a Highland East Cushitic language of the Afro-Asiatic family spoken in south central Ethiopia. Alternate names for the language include Derasa, Deresa, Darassa, Geddeo, Derasanya, Darasa. It is spoken by the Gedeo people
The Gedeo a ...
, which it shares a border with to the south, than other Sidamo languages. According to the ''Ethnologue'', the two languages share a lexical similarity of 60%. Sidaama vocabulary has been influenced by
Oromo vocabulary.
Phonology
Consonants
* Other consonant sounds /p/ and /v/ are only heard from loanwords.
* Gemination is also present for most consonants (e.g. /tː, kː, pʼː/).
* /ɾ/ can also be heard as a trill
ːwhen geminated.
Vowels
Grammar
Noun Phrases
In Sidaama, not all
noun phrase
In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently oc ...
s have
noun
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, ...
s. This can occur when it is so obvious what kind of thing the
referent of the noun phrase is, that it is unnecessary for the speaker to mention it. Sidaama has two types of noun phrases without nouns. One type is made up only of an
adjective
In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...
or a
numeral, where the adjective or the numeral agrees in case, number, and gender with the referent of a noun phrase. This is shown in the examples below:
The other type of noun phrase without a noun is formed with a noun-phrase
clitic, or
NPC. This
NPC starts with ''t'' (
FEM) or ''h'' (
MASC). This is thought to originate from the Afro-Asiatic
demonstrative containing ''t'' (
FEM) or ''k'' (
MASC). The Sidaama
NPC appears in various forms. Which form is used then depends on the gender of the referent of the noun phrase, and the syntactic role or case of the noun phrase. When a noun phrase without a noun is formed with an
NPC, both the speaker and the listener know its referent. In this case, the
NPC attaches to the end of a
genitive noun phrase or relative clause to form a noun phrase without a noun. This is shown in the examples below:
References
Grammars
* Abebe Gebre-Tsadik (1982) "Derived nominals in Sidamo," B.A. thesis, Addis Ababa University. Addis Ababa.
* Abebe Gebre-Tsadik. 1985. "An overview of the morphological structure of Sidamo verbs," ''The verb morphophonemics of five highland east Cushitic languages, including Burji''. Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 2. Cologne: Institut für Afrikanistik. Pages 64–81.
* Anbessa Teferra (1984) "Sidamo verb morphology," B.A. thesis, Addis Ababa University. Addis Ababa.
* Anbessa Teferra. 2000. "A grammar of Sidaama," Doctoral dissertation. Jerusalem, Israel: The Hebrew University.
* ANBESSA TEFERRA, ''Sidaama (Sidaamu Afoo)'', Languages of the World/Materials, 501 (München: LINCOM GmbH, 2014); 109 pp.
*
Cerulli, Enrico (1938) ''La Lingua e la Storia del Sidamo'' (Studi Etiopici II). Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente.
*
Cohen, Marcel (1927) "Du verbe sidama (dans le groupe couchitique)," ''Bulletin de la Société de la Linguistique de Paris'' 83: 169-200.
* Gasparini, Armido (1978) ''Grammatica Practica della Lingua Sidamo''. Awasa (Mimeographed: 127 pp.).
* Kramer, Ruth, and Anbessa Teferra. "Gender switch in Sidaama." ''Journal of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics'' 12, no. 2 (2020): 286-327.
* Kawachi, Kazuhiro (2007) "A grammar of Sidaama (Sidamo), a Cushitic language of Ethiopia," Doctoral dissertation. State University of New York at Buffalo.
* Moreno, Martino Mario (1940) ''Manuale di Sidamo''. Milan: Mondadori.
Dictionaries
* ACADEMY OF ETHIOPIAN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES, ''Sidaamu Afii Dikshinere'' (‘Sidaama monolingual dictionary’) (Addis Ababa: Academy of Ethiopian Languages and Cultures, Addis Ababa University, 2015)
* Gasparini, Armido (1983) ''Sidamo-English dictionary''. Bologna, Italy: E.M.I.
* Hudson, Grover (1989) ''Highland East Cushitic Dictionary'' (Kuschitische Sprachstudien 7). Hamburg: Buske.
* Sileshi Worqineh and Yohannis Latamo (1995) ''Sidaamu-Amaaru-Ingilizete Afii Qaalla Taashsho''
idaama–Amharic–English Dictionary Awasa: Sidaamu Zoone Wogattenna Isporte Biddishsha
idaama Zone Sports and Culture Department
* Kjell Magne Yri, & Steve Pepper. (2019). dictionaria/sidaama: Sidaama Dictionary (Version v1.0)
ata set Zenodo.
Bible translations
* British and Foreign Bible Society (1933) ''St. Mark’s Gospel in Sidamo''. London.
* Ethiopian Bible Society (1984) ''HaÌro GondoÌro''
ew Testament of Sidamo Addis Ababa.
Sociolinguistics and pragmatics
* ANBESSA TEFERRA. Women’s Language of Avoidance and Some Other Sidaama Endangered Cultural Practices. ''Journal of Afroasiatic Languages'' 6/1 (2016), 59–78.
* FEKEDE MENUTA GEWTA. The sociolinguistics and pragmatics of greetings in Sidama. ''Journal of Languages and Culture'' 7/3 (2016), 28–36.
* NIGUSSIE MESHESHA MITIKE and KJELL MAGNE YRI. Sociopolitical Discourse and Communication in Sidaama Folk Media. in ''Multilingual Ethiopia'' 339–357.
* YRI, KJELL MAGNE. School Grammars with Everyday Vocabulary: Suggestion for a Culture Specific Approach, with Sidaamu Afoo as an example. in ''Multilingual Ethiopia'' 319–338.
External links
Bibliography of Highland East Cushiticb
PanAfrican L10n page on Sidamo
{{Authority control
East Cushitic languages
Languages of Ethiopia
Subject–object–verb languages
Sidama Region